My Experience

I went into the hospital to deliver my twins at 9 pm the evening of Feb 17 at 38.5 weeks gestation. While all the moms-to-be around me had fretted throughout their pregnancies about whether they might show that “moment of weakness” during their deliveries and give in to an epidural, I had had none of those questions, as my OB had described in some detail how after Baby A came out she may very well have to reach in to position Baby B and therefore she strongly suggested I accept the epidural! The scenario of having just delivered one baby and then having not just another baby but also a doctor’s hands inside me was enough to convince me I wanted an epidural.

The first part of the night was relatively uneventful. A nurse took my vitals and asked me to strip and put on this weird sort of stretchy skirt under my hospital robe, and then attached two heart monitors to my belly to keep track of A and B as we (and daddy) would work through the night together. The monitors themselves were no big deal – the problem was that they had to be hooked into a machine, which meant that for most of the time in my 15-hour birthing experience, I was fairly immobile, hooked up to the machine next to my hospital bed. The doctor came in around 11 pm to administer a vaginal suppository containing prostaglandin which was supposed to soften the lining of my cervix and potentially trigger contractions. Well, after the second dosage around 2 am, this started working and it was not pleasant. I would try to come up with some analogies around what the contractions felt like but honestly I don’t feel like reliving so I’ll just say that I told my husband that if it was going to get worse, I didn’t think I could do it. I couldn’t get the epidural yet, however, because studies have shown it’s best to allow the cervix to dilate to a certain number of centimeters before you have the epidural or else it actually prolongs the whole ordeal. So, I was lucky enough to be offered a shot of morphine to, as the nurse put it, “take the edge off.” That it did, once it started working, but getting the morphine shot itself was probably the most painful part of the whole labor and delivery process (besides finally coming to the revelation about 1 year after childbirth that no, I would never get my pre-childbirth and breastfeeding body back the way it had been). My husband held me to comfort me as the nurse inserted a huge needle in my butt. Ooowwww!

We used a lot of what we learned in childbirth class throughout the night – breathing, chanting, leaning on my husband, and taking walks whenever possible, although again I couldn’t do much of this because of those heart monitors. At some point in the early morning hours I even somehow took a shower and blow-dried my hair – I must have been really driven to not look completely scary in the first pics of our new family! Finally around 7:30 am I was dilated enough and they were able to give me the epidural and the pitocin, which would finally help the contractions kick in full force (so those dead-of-night contractions were just the start) pretty much concurrently. This was great because I had been told that getting pitocin without the epidural pretty much feels like being hit head on by a truck. Having the epidural inserted wasn’t pleasant but again did NOT hurt as much as that morphine shot. I did learn that at the point you know you are ready for the epidural, SPEAK UP right away, because you will have to get the anesthesiologist off the floor and if you wait too long, the opportunity to get one might pass, and then I would have been on my own with the doctor’s hand straight up me doing whatever she was going to be doing with Baby B and feeling every minute of it.

So, the rest of the morning was sort of blurry to me, I spent most of the time chilling in my bed, listening to a series of “Labor of Love” mix CDs my brother had pressed for me while my husband tried to get some sleep. Periodically the nurses would come in to check progress and see how far I had dilated and effaced and of course check the monitor to ensure A and B were doing okay. I felt NOTHING and couldn’t believe it each time it was evident I was having a contraction. Finally around noon it was time to push. I could feel some pressure but there was no pain, and the only uncomfortable part at this stage was after Baby A had been delivered and the doctors pressed against my belly to make sure Baby B didn’t flip and position himself in the wrong way for delivery. Also, I had a nasty wave of nausea that hit me directly after our strappingly robust new baby boys were wheeled out of the room with my husband: I puked all over the delivery table.